I love hip hop. I love science. And I *love* this little piece of sci-rap from emcee Oort Kuiper (aka Jonathan Chase), extolling the many, many virtues of astrobiology. Here it is on YouTube, and it's part of the Summer 2008 issue of Astrobiology Magazine European Edition.
Starting off with a famous of all computerized voices, Stephen Hawking, and moving in to discussions of the origins of life on our planet, and the search for it elsewhere, Kuiper's not a half-bad emcee. His choice to splice in a snippet of Carl Sagan's narration from "The Cosmos" series is a classic touch, too.
Admittedly, it's not as incendiary, hilarious, or well-produced as the Richard Dawkins Rap, which lambasted evolutionary biologists for not not accepting the religiously-motivated Intelligent Design movement's attempts at corrupting science.
Not surprisingly, that video was put together by the producers of the pro Intelligent Design movie "Expelled." You know, the one with Ben Stein straining to make the ugly case that modern science is equivalent to Nazism in its strident rejection of outside opinion? Oh, you mean you have you seen it? Good, don't bother -- it sucks, even apart from it's dogmatism, it's just a poorly made film.
I'll admit, the cash that must've been spent on the Dawkins Rap made for a good YouTube flick -- I mean "Dick-to-the-Dawk, to-the-PhD. He's smarter than you, he's got a science degree" -- that's pretty catchy. And "Astrobiology 2008 -- Infotainment" probably won't get millions of views on YouTube, and its production values don't measure up to the Dick-to-the-Dawk.
But in terms of earnest, good ideas about how to communicate science to the masses, Oort Kuiper is onto something. If he keeps at it, I could see him one day rising to the all-time high bar of educational videos -- Schoolhouse Rock's Conjuction Junction.
Image: Schoolhouse Rock
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